{"id":3990,"date":"2015-01-19T15:35:16","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T15:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=3990"},"modified":"2015-01-19T15:35:16","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T15:35:16","slug":"drinking-in-cocoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=3990","title":{"rendered":"Drinking in Cocoa."},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Monday morning and we are here in Cocoa FL for a few days enjoying this very quaint town on the ICW.\u00a0 Two years ago, on our last trip passing through this area, we stopped for a few days and it’s nice to be back again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Last night we went to a restaurant downtown for a drink and appetizer and while we were sitting at the bar, we asked the bartender what there was to do that would be fun while we visited.\u00a0\u00a0 She immediately suggested that we visit the Kennedy Space Center, but when we said that we were here by boat her expression became perplexed as it seems that there really isn\u2019t ANYTHING to do in the town itself if we didn\u2019t have a car?\u00a0\u00a0 Well, at least not from the point of view of a local.\u00a0 Anyway, we think it\u2019s a nice place to walk around or go out to dinner. \u00a0 Perhaps we should find a car and visit the space center. \u00a0I’ll think about that.<\/p>\n

One thing that I plan on doing is to visit the local hardware store.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a terrific store and perhaps one of the best old time hardware store I have ever been in, the sort that were everywhere before Home Depot and Lowes redefined the genre.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was quite taken by the place on our last visit and wrote about it in this post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When we were in New Smyrna we enjoyed walking around town in particular as there was a street fair going on with lots of activity. \u00a0\"\"<\/a>I particularly liked this snack truck built on an old Model A ford truck body.\u00a0\"\"<\/a>In Cocoa there is a great waterfront park as is so often the case in towns along the ICW.\u00a0\u00a0 The ancient live oaks are very beautiful with resurrection ferns growing on the limbs.\"\"<\/a><\/span>We visited a nice little craft gallery in New Smyrna and outside they had a \u201cbeehive oven\u201d .\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This reminded me of my plans to make a \u201cmud oven\u201d at home.\u00a0 I have been stymied by my inability to find a source of good clay near where we live so perhaps I will build one like this, out of firebrick and cement.\u00a0 It would certainly be more weather resistant in winter CT weather.\u00a0\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>We were first introduced to mud ovens in Maine a number of years ago. I was smitten and wrote a post<\/a> about our first experience at a mud oven garden party.\u00a0 Perhaps this summer I\u2019ll build one.\u00a0 Hope so.<\/span><\/p>\n

We had a very nice lunch at a new restaurant in New Smyrna and I particularly like this photo of Brenda.\u00a0 Notice that she stopped looking at her phone long enough for me to take her picture. \u00a0When we are aboard and away from family, we are pretty desperate for contact. \u00a0 “Bob, call your mother!”\"\"<\/a>That evening we had dinner aboard Pandora and went for our first \u201ccocktail cruise\u201d around the mangroves nearby.\u00a0 We enjoyed watching the water birds watching us. \u00a0\u00a0This Ibis was quite beautiful.\u00a0 I tried to get a photo of him in flight but alas, just one of him on his perch.\"\"<\/a><\/span>Nice shot of what I think was an Egret.\"\"<\/a><\/span>We also spied a bright red spot within the mangrove roots which turned out to be a good size crab. His color suggests that he\u2019s already been boiled.\u00a0 Not so, as he\u2019s just that color naturally.\u00a0 I guess he\u2019s tough enough to not worry about being well camouflaged.\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/span>Back aboard we enjoyed a nice evening and dinner. \u00a0Brenda’s “birthday flowers looked particularly nice in the evening light. \u00a0Perhaps I will title this photo “florials with mixed media, stainless steel, plastic and canvas”. \u00a0How artistic. \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>Yesterday morning we were greeted by a lovely sunrise just before raising the anchor to head to Cocoa.\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/span>Along the way we passed a spot with thousands of birds that took off in a cloud as we passed by.\u00a0 There are plenty of birds along the ICW but for some reason there was a huge number in this particular area.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What a din they made as they parted to make way for Pandora\u2019s passing.\u00a0 It was pretty obvious that they weren\u2019t enthusiastic about us disturbing their peace.\"\"<\/a><\/span>Well, it\u2019s a nice sunny day here in Coco so I think we\u2019ll head ashore soon.\u00a0 Perhaps it would be good spot to get, well, a cup of cocoa.\u00a0 Yes, that would fit. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With that in mind, perhaps we should head over to the Bahamas and visit Rum Cay.\u00a0 That would be even better than a cup of Cocoa if a bit more rustic.\u00a0 For now, Cocoa seems perfect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Monday morning and we are here in Cocoa FL for a few days enjoying this very quaint town on the ICW.\u00a0 Two years ago, on our last trip passing through this area, we stopped for a few days and it’s nice to be back again.\u00a0 Last night we went to a restaurant downtown for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4002,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3990\/revisions\/4002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}